Hi, I think there are important differences between "frbr:item" and "holdings". (There may be interpretations of "holdings" other than what I'll use here, which is why it's probably useful to clarify the term.) In a local catalog, there might be one bibliographic record that has two holdings records (e.g. one for the main library, one for the engineering library), and then each of those might have multiple item records representing multiple copies (e.g. 3 copies at main, 2 at engineering). I would consider each item record (not each holdings record) to correspond to a frbr:item. In WorldCat, a bibliographic record may list multiple libraries as "holding" institutions, even though each of those may have multiple copies. From what I understand, WorldCat Local doesn't track individual copies, but has to query your local catalog to get the copy info (location, call number, availability). In theory, each copy of a particular publication is an frbr:item of the frbr:manifestation. But we have traditionally grouped these copies together by location (by institution and within an institution). That is, our current systems don't really have: manifestation --> item but something more like: manifestation --> [ institution --> ] location --> item At some point, in a future frbrized universal catalog, we may decide it's better to drop that tradition and just have each item linked directly to the manifestation. (The item itself would contain the info about the owning institution, location, etc.) Keith > > ... anyway, the point is -- you have to define 'holding', or you can't be > > assured that the response to your request is the correct granularity of > > information to answer the question you're trying to ask. > > Ok, then I'd define a holding an instance of frbr:item with the > properties "location" (a building, an institution, an URL...), > "identifier" (call-number, item-number, URL...) and "availability" > (available, next week, only on campus, free for download...). As shown > in my ad-hoc example "location" can be nested, but that's not the point. > Defining holding is not the problem - you just have to look how > holdings are *practically* used in libraries (instead of starting a > theoretical discussion). The problem is more how to get the data out of > library systems.